Apple announced yesterday that its retail stores would open early at 8am on Friday morning to accommodate the masses that want to purchase a new iPad and missed out on the pre-order opportunities. In addition to the U.S., potential customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands will also have their chance to grab the fresh new tablet.

Apple also made its clear that its U.S. retail partners -- Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, Target -- will also carry the new iPad.

Today, however, Walmart informed us that it would jump the gun on competing stores -- and even Apple stores -- by offering the new iPad at 12:01am on Friday.

"A limited supply of the new iPad will be available at your local 24-hour Walmart," said a Walmart representative in an email to DailyTech. "Other retailers’ doors don’t open until 8 a.m. local time, so you can get to work on time and beat the rush by coming to Walmart."

The company notes that it will have the 16GB Wi-Fi models in both black and white. It doesn't, however, indicate if it will sell the higher-capacity models or models with LTE.

Analysis from Apple's handpicked, "top tier" reviewers has been overwhelmingly positive, but we'll have to wait until the ever-critical consumers get the devices in their hands to see how the tablet crowd feels about the device and its slightly expanded dimensions.

In other iPad news, iFixit has already gotten its hands on the tablet and disassembled it. For those that are into gadget teardowns, head on over to iFixit’s site to seen the new iPad in the buff.

"You've determined that he is a loser and a douchebag because he has camping out to buy a product?"

Yes, I have. Its one thing to show up a few mins early to buy something day one, but when you get to the point you are actually camping out, you are a loser and and idiot, along with a no-life buffoon. My god man, get some perspective.

For things that sell out, like converts and games its always been a thing that people do to make sure they get tickets... But for a product release to make sure you get it at 8:00am when the store opens as opposed to a bit later is just retarted. Especially with Apple, because Apple is very good with getting product into stores prior to release. FFS, just order one off the internet and wait a day.

Unless they plan on only making a few thousand iPad3's, that's not really the same.

There aren't that many people camping out for iPad's this time as apposed to the iPad2 or iPhone 4S. Most people realize, I think/hope, that it's basically an iPad2 with a huge premium fee for higher resolution.